Pig Sty Avenue

Had another hour on the Bluthner yesterday, playing Lilliburlero again and again and again...  It's not perfect, and sometimes I have a slight hesitation.  But I could sit down at a piano anywhere and play a recognizable version of a famous tune, which was the plan.  It's time to move on. Well, not so much move on, as return to. Return to the ABRSM Grade 1 syllabus, that is, scales, broken chords, and pick up where I left off with the Mozart Minuet in G major K1.e. And I'm likely going to be flying out to Saudi middle of next month, so I need to come to terms with learning on the midi-keyboard. I can't say, now, when I'll be able to get hold of any kind of 88 key weighted instrument out there. I'll probably be working in a small city, which from the online evidence has no kind of music shop. Though it will have a shifting population of oil industry ex-pats, so I might get something interesting, second-hand, from a departing musician. Who knows, a harmonium o...

I've spent three hours or so this weekend with Lilliburlero, getting quicker, and then realizing it was getting too quick overall, the point was to stop inadvertent rests. So I'm working on that, playing it right through, over and over again, and the rests slowly disappearing.  I might have it just-so by the end of this week. But the point is, I'm reaching a new place. I know all the notes, (more or less, the inadvertent rests are caused by a slight memory lapse, and search in the effective memory, "is it a LH G or F goes with RH A that's just coming up?... er... Oh fuck!")  But as I lose those memory gaps, and it gets into the process memory, (and that's palpably happening this weekend), then it's a whole new thing - trying to make it into music - the tiny gradations of tempo, that make all the difference between tranquilo , say, and the left-right-left of a march. I can only repeat, wow, man, a whole new level. But I'm still miles out, as ...

Been getting between 15 mins and an hour each day.  The dance studio where the Bluthner is located gets incredibly hot, this weather.  It's got floor to ceiling windows on one side, and despite blinds that side of the studio's like a 20x100 ft radiator. Anyway, I've done a few scales, Hanons, etc, but mostly it's been Lilliburlero.  I had to work with the sheet music again until end of last week, but I've got it (re)committed to memory again now. I can play it over and over, mistake free. The tempo's improving, but it's still not at Marching speed yet, though it's no longer a lullaby.  But I had a brainwave this afternoon: the tune as I've learned it has become a tune of its own, with that tempo, and slight rests at points which were difficult, and even though I've mastered them, the hesitations have become embedded. So the next stage is to listen again as I play, and make it musical. In the bigger picture, I'm going back to the Mozart ...

First practice in nearly a month, not on a Steinway, but on a Bluthner. It's a battered old thing, but is in tune. I did a bit less than an hour, and my knuckles are glowing somewhat now. Surprised to find that I'd (practically) forgotten Lilliburlero, and had to puzzle it through with the music in front of me. It's interesting that I hadn't actually fully memorised it, though it felt as if it was embedded last time I played it.  This is subjective, but it felt as if recalling two hands working together was the difficult part - a melody alone might have been easier, but it was as if the two handed learning had overwritten the earlier RH melody learning.  Got the first seven bars back ok, and puzzled through the rest but haven't got it all back yet. Another hour should restore it to the process memory, and then I can get back to actually practising it again.  Which I'm looking forward to, practising on a strange piano with its own history, it's a bit like a h...